The Bait With Which You Fish

I don't recommend going to see "Black Swan."  It was a rather adolescent account of obsession and madness, I thought.  It could have been good if it had been treated differently.  The dance imagery was nice and now I want to photograph ballet dancers.  To wit, I've bid for a new lens on eBay that will change the way I shoot.  I'll know if I win it in about a week.  If I get it, I will begin a new series of portraits, a knock-off of Irving Penn's fabulous "Small Trades."  I don't think I will do mine in the studio, though.  I've been pondering this project for a while, but I will have to get very brave to do it.  I've been trying to notice people who still wear uniforms in their jobs any longer.  Mostly, I've noticed working men.  Approaching them with the proposition that I would like to make their portrait is very, very daunting, and I think to hire an assistant who would set everything up.  Female.  Youngish.  Somebody they might not reject out of hand.  Youngish females are able to do so many things that I am not.  We are at the antipodes of existence.  Yes, I will employ one for this, I'm sure.  If I don't, if I do this all on my own, I will be my own hero.  I did the surfer series by myself.  I don't know how now.  I remember that it really wore me out.  But there was a sort of groove I got into, a trancelike state in which I wasn't myself but something else.  It was almost as if I were watching everything take place.  The more I think about it, the less likely it seems I will do this project, but I must.  I must.  I can see it in my mind's eye--celery pickers, welders, gas station attendants in gas stations that still pump your gas (are there any left?), chefs, firemen. . . shot with a 4x5 camera.  Perhaps I will need to purchase some portable strobes.  I know the ones, small things at a very high price.  But they would look right, like a Shelby Adams portrait (here's his setup).

There is a new year coming.  I can't help but think about it though I try not to.  The beautiful girl who came to my door that night, the promise of the season, never returned.  Not her nor anyone else.  But I am setting about making my life more appealing.  Yes, I think, one must be appealing.  The trick is to know your audience.  My friend used to say, "Be careful what bait you fish with.  It will determine what you catch."  I'm going to try to appeal to myself a bit more.  I know, I know. . . but what can one do?

Ekaterina Grigorieva

Yesterday, I posted an photo by Ekaterina Grigorieva without comment.  Originally I had posted one of my own photos, but I realized that I had posted it before, so I quickly changed it.

I fell across Ms. Grigorieva work while I was sick and surfing images on the internet. I always love coming across to me unknown Russian and Eastern European photo sites, for the sensibilities are so much different from those in Western Europe and the U.S.A.  They seem old.  They appeal to me.

I wrote to Ms. Grigorieva and told her how wonderful her blog made me feel. She had created a life in pictures that was enviable.  I have no idea what the text says.  I put it through Babelfish to translate it, but it comes out nonsense.  I have thought about writing my blog in English, translating it to Russian, then back to English.  Here is what this entry would say.

Yesterday, I hung out the photo Of ekaterina Of grigorieva without the commentary. Initially I hung out one of my own photos, but I carried out that I it hung out him before; therefore I rapidly changed him. I fell through the work of the mrs. Of grigorieva thus far I was patients and being occupied by [serfingom] of image on the Internet. I always love [prikhodyashch] across to me unknowns Russian and it is eastern - the European places for the photo, since of sensitivity distinguished so many [mestv] to Western Europe and USA. They seem old. They appeal to me. I wrote to the mrs. Of grigorieva and said to it as miraculously its [blog] he made me [chyvstvo]. It created life in the images which was enviable. I do not have any idea of what text he speaks. I to his treasure through Babelfish in order to transfer him, but it comes outside nonsense. I thought about writing of my [bloga] in the English, his [perevodyashch] to the Russian, after this back to English. Here what this entrance would say.

Not all that bad, really.

Ms. Grigorieva wrote back quickly and said she would be pleased if I posted her work.  I believe that she is young, that some of the images are of her, but I have no reason to think so.  At least nothing I can document.  Look at her blog and make up your own stories, too.

Shut-In

photo by Ekaterina Grigorieva

I have developed "shut-in syndrome."  It has been a week, and I have no desire to leave my house.  I tried. I went shopping once.  I tried going to the bookstore, but it made me irritated and dizzy.  I came home and took a long nap.  I went to my mother's house last night for dinner with her and her sister who is visiting.  It was rather a command performance.  I just wanted to go home.

The thought of interacting with people again doesn't appeal to me.  I've been O.K. sitting here with books and a computer and my guitar.  Maybe the cat helps.  It scares me how content I've been.

I looked the syndrome up on the internet.  I found this same thing over and over again.

"[A] recent study out of Brigham Young University finds that having strong social relationships—connections to friends, family, neighbors and colleagues—improves your odds of survival by 50 percent. And failing to cultivate such relationships does more damage to your health than lack of exercise or obesity and just as much damage as smoking and alcoholism.

The key to healthy relationships, say the researchers, is the feeling that you are connected to a group. It creates a sense of responsibility for others and provides a sense of life meaning and purpose. You might gain this sense by joining a club—such as the local Rotary or Lion's Club. You might cultivate it by becoming active in local politics. Or it might be as simple as really getting to know your neighbors."

Apparently, I am shortening my life.  Having just failed a relationship, I am not eager for more.  Perhaps I did hope that the beautiful woman with the wonderful bangs who came to my door before I got sick would come back and save me.  O.K.  I did.  And I guess I do.  Perhaps it is only relationships of a certain kind that I hope for.  Maybe I have sequestered myself out of spite.

I will force myself out of the house today.  My coffee maker quit making coffee, so I will buy a new one.  That is not developing "healthy relationships," I know, but it will force me into some sort of interpersonal interaction.

I am dreaming again, though, while awake.  Travel.  My current international list includes Cuba, Morocco, and this morning, I added Bulgaria to the list after reading a travel piece at CNN online.  I'd like to go back to Paris and Barcelona again, too.  Domestically--I'm leaving that up to you.  I want to go to events and festivals.  After watching the series, and since I love carnivals, I want to go to Atlantic City (never been).  State Fairs.  Crab Festivals.  Whatever.  I'm going to hope you will keep me informed.  I'll be the boy with the camera.

Confessions of a Miscreant

Yesterday's post was a mistake, I know.  I admitted as much when I posted it.  That photographer I mentioned is sure to make trouble for me now.  I'll never get a fair shake from the big boys and girls.  They'll see me as the miscreant I am, and will laugh at the naiveté of my images.  I know, I know. . . I've done it again.

I should be kinder to people.  My critical nature is a source of friction.  People like it O.K. when I am critical about myself either rightly or wrongly.  But even then, they know it would be better if I didn't think so much about myself. And they are right.  For a while, when I was in a band that played a lot at a local pub, I would hang out there, drink beers, eat chili dogs, and I learned the lingo.  "Dude," I would yell, or "There's the Big Guy", and people really liked me.  I learned that was all I needed to say to make people happy.  The band was not very good, but we were popular.  My never paying for a beer was a testament to that.

But the band broke up and I lost my girl and my cynical nature reemerged.  It's never done me any good.

So this year, I will try to lose it.  That will be my New Year's Resolution.  Who really likes Woody Allen?  I'll have to reject all my role models, probably.  I search around my head for a hero.  Someone uncritical and sincere.  Steinbeck, perhaps.  I'll have to research that, though.  I don't know enough about him.  I like some of his writing, but he's always seemed a bit bland to me.  I'm going to have to explore, read new authors, watch different movies.  I've been subjected to too much dissidence.  There are people who can help me though.  For instance, this from The New York Times:


"Sometime long ago, a writer by the side of Walden Pond decided that middle-class Americans may seem happy and successful on the outside, but deep down they are leading lives of quiet desperation. This message caught on (it’s flattering to writers and other dissidents), and it became the basis of nearly every depiction of small-town and suburban America since. If you judged by American literature, there are no happy people in the suburbs, and certainly no fulfilled ones." (A.O. Scott on Jonathan Franzan's "Freedom")


Of course, I've been hinting that the only happy people I know are the ones who have lived the traditional wisdom, have sought The American Dream.  I've been trying to see through the dissident haze that has clouded my vision, that lead me down this dirty little path.  


I'll be careful of my language, too.  We think in language, and language is our prison--we've all studied that.  Here is part of another review of Franzon's book in "The Atlantic" that is apropos: 


"[A]lthough the narrator of Freedom tells us on the first page, 'There had always been something not quite right about the Berglunds,' one need read only that the local school “sucked” and that Patty was “very into” her teenage son, who in turn was “fucking” the girl next door, to know that whatever is wrong with these people does not matter. The language a writer uses to create a world is that world, and Franzen’s strenuously contemporary and therefore juvenile language is a world in which nothing important can happen. Madame Bovary’s marriagesucked, Heathcliff was into Catherine: these words fail the context not just because they are of our own time. There is no import in things that “suck,” no drama in someone’s being “into” someone else. As for the F word, Anthony Burgess once criticized the notion that to use it in matter-of-fact prose is to hark back to “a golden age of Anglo-Saxon candour”; the word was taboo from the start, because it stands for brutal or at best impersonal sex. “A man can fuck a whore but, unless his wife is a whore, he cannot fuck his wife … There is no love in it.” A writer like Franzen, who describes two lovers as “fucking,” trivializes their relationship accordingly. The result is boredom."


I love this stuff.  I see how sloppy our proletarian dissidence has become.  


If I have offended any of you with yesterday's missive, know that I have learned my lesson and am beginning to mend my ways.  I hope it is not too late.  It probably is, and I will most assuredly run out the rest of my days under the shadow of the life already lived, but by Grace. . . . 


We'll see.  

Missive from an Ingrate

I've damage to repair this year, troubles to address.  I've been sick and in bed all week, so I have had plenty of time to think.  Not that I have, really, but the under-mind has been working on things all this time.  Relentless.  I've been feeding it a steady diet.  I've read two books and watched countless hours of movies. My favorite has been HBO's "Boardwalk Empire."  It is dark and bold and reminds me of "Deadwood" in it's themes.  It has beautiful women being exploited and promoted, brutalized and saved, by very ugly men. Always a good combination.  Everyone's corrupt.  And, of course, it reminds me of the troubles in our own times.  Al Queda is our modern version.  One day, it will make a hell of a series.  I hope I'm around to see it.  I think it won't be possible, though, until we get a modern day version of Elliot Ness, some tough good-guy figure, someone who is potentially as interesting as the bad guys.

So I keep thinking about how to proceed this coming year.  Should I seek more conventional solutions to my dilemmas or should I become evermore the outsider?  So far, neither has appealed to me much.  There must be another way.

The holidays bring out the conventional in some and distaste for such in others.  To date, I have been appalled by the former.  I read blogs.  I am fascinated by the inner workings of the people they reveal.  For instance, I've watched one successful photographer go through a series of transformations.  He's bought a house, had a nutritional come-to-jesus, lost weight, and become thankful for his life.  He is one of those conservative liberals who is melchizedec in his beliefs.  My friend posted his thankfulness for the richness of his life yesterday.  All this thankfulness puts me off, both the "Look at me," and the "me, too" varieties.  Joy I can take, but thankful happiness is a convention that has worn me out.  I know, I know. . . it is the season to be thankful.  But I think to myself, "Show some restraint."  It is worse than flaunting money, and when you aren't rich, it is merely gaudy.  All this bowing to perceived fortunes is bound to produce emotional and spiritual criminals.

Perhaps I should quit watching "Boardwalk Empire" in my diseased state.

I'm certain that this is not the topic I should be considering here in the cold darkness sitting alone like a sentry waiting for dawn.  It is a mistake, and I will surely regret it.  The temperature is below freezing, an oddity here, something of which to take notice.  This and my illness keeps me in place, confined to my heated space.  I will go back to bed in a little while, after sunrise, and when I get up, I may feel differently.  If I do, perhaps I'll delete this entry.  Or maybe I'll simply write a rejoinder on top of it.

Don't get me wrong, though.  I am thankful.

What I Got for Christmas

But for a brief visit by my mother in the morning, I spent Christmas 2010 alone.  Of course, I wondered at this.  It seemed familiar.  It was like the end of something.

I felt better but not well.  I decided not to go anywhere so as not to have to bathe.  A breakfast of coffee and a sweet bun.  For lunch, I cut open the pre-cooked ham I had thought to buy on Christmas Eve, sliced it thick and the loaf of sourdough bread as well.  I slathered it all in horse radish mustard and opened a bottle of cheap champagne I'd bought for mimosas thinking it would not make a difference.  I was wrong about that.  Still, the mimosas were better than the sandwich, so I had more.  The day wore on.

For Christmas, the cat got a furry mouse with a Velcro enclosed opening and a stoppered jar of catnip.  Over the years, people have given her other catnip toys, but she has never taken any notice.  I filled the furry mouse and threw it to her, and she fell immediately in love.  She bit it, held it, lay on it.  I had begun to believe that the whole catnip thing was a myth.  Now I'm worried about the it.  I mean, is this like throwing your kid a bag of pot and saying, "Enjoy"?  Will the cat's personality change?  I'm not kidding.  I worry.

The day was quiet.  I watched a streaming movie from Netflix.  My mother gave me a large flatscreen HD television for Christmas, and I had spent my sick days putzing around and setting it up.  It is amazing, really, some sort of technological miracle.  Size matters.  I am transfixed by the power of the thing.  I bought the whole movie package from the cable company, every movie channel.  A DVR.  Movies On Demand.  I got Apple TV so that I can stream Netflix and rent shows from iTunes.  I can even watch YouTube with it.  I will be saturated soon.  Sitting alone in the room, watching movie after movie, this was Christmas.

The phone never rang.

Toward evening, I walked outside.  The kids across the street were playing with Christmas toys.  Another neighbor's guest were putting opened gifts into the trunk of a car.  The wind was beginning to stir, visage of the coming front.  But for now, the sky was clear and going darker blue.  I thought about my father, dead forever now, the Christmases in the small rented house on the railroad tracks after the divorce.  Those skies were blue, too, and high, the sound of the wind coming from far, far away.

The year was ending badly, I thought, and I thought about what changes I would make.  I still have resources, though I've mismanaged much.  This year, I must not live in a cloud, I told myself with certainty.  I will pay attention, live with full awareness, with purpose.  There is much that needs to be done.

Back inside, I opened the bottle of McCallum's I'd bought on Christmas Eve during my short shopping foray.  I sat down to scan some of the hundreds of Polaroids I've neglected.  During the long scans, I read more of Burton's translation of "Arabian Nights."

When I had had enough of that, I went to the couch to finish the Steve Martin novel about the art world I had been reading.  The cat lay on the floor next to me cuddled up with her new drug rat.  I thought about people walking by on the street looking in.  I wondered what they might think.

It was eight.  My mother had told me earlier that she would bring me something to eat from dinner with the relatives, but I'd heard nothing from her.  One more drink, I thought, and then I would put a frozen enchilada in the microwave.  I sat down to watch another episode of "Boardwalk Empire," something the movie package had given me.  I liked it, watching it hours on end to catch up.  At ten, the phone rang.  I had not stirred.  It was my mother.

"I thought you were going to bring me something to eat?" I said.

"Oh.  I didn't think it would be very good."

"You should have called me at least."

"I'm sorry."

I hadn't managed to make the enchilada.

Late, after three hours of "Empire," I thought I should go to bed.  Christmas was over.  It was through.

I had tried not to think about all the people who had not sent greetings this year.  I tried not to wonder if an old girlfriend was in town.  I'd tried not to think about any of it at all.  Then, the last thing before bed, I had an email from a tragic girl from long ago.  She is a bit of a wrecking crew, tall, pretty, troubled.  She had been run over on her bicycle in South Beach, had been lying in her apartment taking Percocet for days to numb the pain.  She'd spent Christmas alone, she wrote.  How was I?

Much like you, I thought.  Much like you.

The Merriest of Christmases

Christmas dawn does not come early this year.  Up in the dark, I walk directly outside, for what purpose, I don't know.  The cat comes with me.  I stand in the cold air. . . listening.  Everything is quiet.  No jingling, no tinkling, no sound of stray animals sneaking through the leaves.  The cat stays close around my feet.

I look around the house to see, but there are no surprises, no secret card or present left me in the night.  I think about this before returning to the warmth of the kitchen.  

The cold in my head is breaking up, a good sign but miserable.  I put on the coffee and put down food for the cat.  

Late yesterday afternoon, I showered and left the house to get my mother a Christmas present.  I'd had an idea.  Feeling like a sick man, looking the same, I went to a single store.  Christmas shoppers made their final purchases.  I made my first.  

Driving home, I thought of what I'd missed this year.  I stopped at the grocery store to buy myself a small canned ham, some mustard with horse radish, and a loaf of  freshly baked sour dough bread.  Christmas dinner.  

It was all I could do.  The effort had wasted me.  I called my mother to tell her I didn't feel I could go out, but if she wanted, she could come by this evening.  She said that she would let me rest.  She'd see me in the morning.  

I microwaved a frozen organic enchilada and sat down before the television.  The cat jumped up beside me, lying on a sweater I had thrown down.  The next few hours were spent like this, both of us barely moving.  

The year is ending this way.  No matter, I tell myself.  There is next.  I have plans.  A year is a varied thing.  

And so . . . the sun is up.  No matter how I feel today, there will be champagne.  Mimosas at the least.  Wishing you the Merriest of Christmases.  C'est la vie.  

Christmas Eve

Sorry.  Worst performance ever.  Promises unkept, things left undone.  Nothing purchased, nothing made.  Rain checks all around.  I hear it could be worse.  No doubt, in time, it will be.

I've struggled with this for an hour.

All That I Want.

My favorite Christmas song.  

Side Effects May Include. . . .

I've not bought a Christmas present yet.  I always wait until the last minute, but I am hurting with sickness, so this could be a challenge.  I'm living in the spirit of Beckett just now.

The medicine they allow you for colds and flus are surely much worse for you than the ones they won't let you have.  I'm taking the over the counter versions and can feel them choking off my vital organs, working some toxic effect upon them.  You can taste it behind the syrupy sweetness they use to disguise the venom.  A little, pure opiate would be much better.  Other than the addiction, there is little negative effect from opiates.  Just now my head is swathed in a Nyquil haze. It almost takes the pain away.  It almost helps me sleep.  Side effects may include. . . .

Literal Illness

I've got the sickness.  I'm talking about the real one, not the self-inflicted one.  Nothing to do but see it through.  This is my first day of vacation.  Bitter pill to swallow.  Rather swallow an opium ball or half a codeine tablet for relief, but nothing like that is provided for us these days.  A little bottle of Paregoric would do. Used to be able to sign for it at the pharmacy without a doc.  But doctors used to come to the house then too.  

I'll be on my feet and back to the other sickness soon enough.  For now I'll try to have some fever dreams.  

Full Cold Moon/Total Eclipse/Winter Solstice

photo by Rhonda Prince

Life is full of ironies.  I try to enjoy them when I can.  But I feel a little loss at this one.  Last night, as everyone knows, was the full moon lunar eclipse.  It was the Full Cold Moon.  And if the eclipse were not enough, it ushered in the first day of winter.  An auspicious day, I think, for anyone with a shred of romance in their bones.  And normally I would have been up to see it all and to drink and ponder, to wonder and wish on the moon's orange glow.  But I was inauspicious.  I've taken ill with a sore throat and runny nose.  So before eleven, I had drunk some sake, taken some cold medicine, and wandered off to my bed, not to rise again before seven.  This never happens.  On any other night, I would have risen to go out to see the spectacle.  I have an email from a friend at 4:11 a.m. asking me if I, too, was out looking at the moon.  I feel the difference.  I am odd and disappointed.

And I would guess that most of the people who come to this site were out last night, too.  I am a hundred percent sure that this is exactly the sort of person you are.  You are people who desire adventure whether in far off places or down the street, people who can turn a casual day into a memorable event.  And I feel left out.  Perhaps, you know, I would have seen that girl from the party wandering in and out of the old oaks past my house looking at the sky.  Surely anyone I would have seen last night this an upward gaze would have been someone I would like to meet.  The more I think about this now, the more I moan and gnash my teeth.  People will speak of it as a touchstone event.  "Do you remember the first night of winter when we watched the earth's shadow pitch across the moon?  Do you remember where we were?"  Of course they will.

I am being punished for something surely, or more likely have decided to punish myself.  Like one of Wallace Stevens' middle road, middle mind, middle class dwellers, like e.e. cummings "un" people, like "someones" and "everyones," I slept.  Sitting here before the keyboard now, I stop to recite the lines of "The Disillusionment of Ten O'clock":

Was I one with those lacking imagination last night?  Did I fail some critical test?  With what lot was I slumbering?  I know where I caught my disease.  It was in the mall on Sunday--remember?  I told you.  All those awful people walking about not knowing what they wanted, jerking and hopping with too much animation, excited by the commercial renderings of a holiday, or maybe just excited to be anywhere but home.  And in their sameness they coughed and sneezed and made me one with them, a contagious part of the tribe.

I am bitter.  It is my own fault.  I knew beforehand.

But I was ill and the sleeping has done me good.  Perhaps I slept with faeries watching over me last night, sprinkling a sleeping dust and giving me dreams.  That is what I will try to tell myself as I lumber through the first winter's day.  It is clear and cold, and I am unwell.  I'll need something powerful to cure me.

Here is a photo sent to me by Rhonda Prince the other day taken, she said, in the morning as she wrote at her desk.  I am flattered and happy.  I will use this as a talisman in hopes of recovery.  I will try to recover something.

And, of course, I will let you know.

Nothing

Sunday, too, the cold rain came down.  And I could not get warm.  Every few minutes I would turn the thermostat up, but there is little more chilling than the moist southern cold.  "This will be a good day," I told myself, making plans for all the things I would do.  I got my Christmas cards and addresses and began to work at that.  I ate a pecan danish roll of some sort with a big glass of milk.  And sat.  And sat.  It was too awful, I told myself, to run outside, so I made myself dress to go run on the treadmill at the gym.  It was already after noon.

On my way out, I looked at the answering machine.  I rarely check it because I never get any phone calls.  But the light was blinking.  It was my neighbor, the one who had the Christmas party and didn't invite me.  I don't know how I missed the call.  I must have been at the grocery store when he rang.  "It's about eight o'clock," he said, "and we're trying to get on the internet over here, but it says we need a password.  Give me a call."  The cheap bastard had some balls, I thought.  For some reason, he was calling me from his party next door and was trying to use my account to get on the internet.  It is not like the guy doesn't have any money.  He is a high ranking architect with one of the major firms in town.  Has been for year.  Insult to injury, I thought.

After the gym, I decided that I would go to the Apple Store at the mall to see what I might get myself for Christmas.  I needed to get out of the house.  I needed, I  thought, to see the Christmas revelers.

And that cured me.  It was not romantic.  It was not fun.  Horrible people walking about looking aimlessly for things to want.  And me.

But dinner with my mother was no panacea, either.  She pressed me for details about Christmas.  When would we leave to go to Hillbilly Holidays, she asked.  What day?  When?

After dinner, at my own home, hoping for something that was not coming, I got a call from my friend who lives in Yosemite.  He had invited me to come out over Christmas to stay with him and his wife and his one year old baby.  I have been thinking about it for weeks.  I should want to go.  I have not been to Yosemite in the winter to see it covered up in snow.  I would be in the home of best friends (I performed their wedding ceremony two years ago).  It should be marvelous.

But something has been holding me back.

We chatted for a bit. He had his baby boy in his lap and was preparing his dinner.  He is an outdoor guide now, having retired from a stock brokerage at the age of thirty.  I will tell you that story some time.  I've wondered how his investments have done and whether he is hurting now with the recession.

"We're thinking of buying up some property in Mariposa," he said.  "Things are really cheap.  We can rent it out.  We're thinking of getting two places, maybe."

"Jesus," I whined, "I'm sitting here thinking about how I will survive old age and you're telling me this?"

"I've got some more news," he said.  "Did I tell you Madison is pregnant?  The doc says she thinks she can see a nut sack in the sonogram.  It could be another boy."

"That's great," I said, "really great."

"O.K. I've got to get Anderson fed.  Call me and let me know if you decide to come out."

What is it about other people's happiness?  I was glad for them, of course.  It was not that, but the absolute contrast in things.  I sat there alone in the darkness plunging quickly into a place I didn't want to go.

"Stop it," I said.  "Stop it."

The cat looked up from where she was curled upon the couch.  The house was clean.  I'd done that, at least.  There were the pictures on the walls and the Christmas cards on the mantle.  The heater snapped on to fight the cold.

"You are thinking too much.  You sit and think.  Just stop it."

I got up to check my email.  The inbox was empty.  There was nothing.

A Yin

This is just to say. . . .  Go to this New York Times post.  Look and read.  Oh my, the images and the interview.  A Yin.  If you don't read Mandarin (I think), just click around and scroll down.  There are about a hundred images there.

He is masterful.

Fate and Hope

A long day's reprieve.  Morning hardly broke with a gray, cold rain that told me not to move.  Stay home.  Read.  Sleep.  There were Christmas cards to write.  I wold eat.  But there was no food in the house.  The night before I got home from the studio at eleven p.m. having only had a bottle of champagne for dinner.  I'd looked for something to eat.  I found a three-hundred calorie frozen dinner.  Now the morning coffee and a hollow stomach.  I would have to go out to hunt and gather.  Still, the hollowness could be good.  I must get slender, I thought, and taut.  I would have to force myself to the gym.  It did not look good for staying in.

But I lingered.  I scooped a few spoonfuls of hard peanut that lacked oil as I had not stirred it up enough when I first opened it so that now it was hard and dry and crumbly, and I drizzled honey on top of it in the spoon.  There was enough milk left for a few swallows.  I sat and watched the rain.

By noon I had managed to get into some gym clothes.  Getting out of my car, I ran into some neighbors who I had known better when I was married.  They are Golden People, blessed with fantastic money they did nothing to obtain.  Her father had pioneered the first big cell phone service provider, sold fifty-one percent to AT&T, then went on to create Netscape.  While I was still married and we all would eat and drink together, she told us to watch Good Morning America the next day because they were interviewing her father.  He had just given $100 million to a state university, the largest donation ever given to a public school.  I guessed that if he was giving that much away to a college, he might have invested something in his daughter as well.  They had everything and everyone wanted to know them.  They would take large groups on skiing adventures to Colorado for weeks at a time.  And they were wonderful people, too, charming and friendly, and she, more than him, was down to earth.  He, perhaps, couldn't afford to be.  It is difficult, I imagine, to pretend you are head of the family under such circumstances.  But he did a good job nonetheless.

After the divorce, though, I had gone underground and now I got the automatic smiles and the thirty second conversations.  They had children and were living the life we all aspire to, so I understood completely.  We share less common ground than before.  But running into them on the way into the Y reminded me of things I didn't want to be reminded of just now.  We all spoke quickly without breaking stride.

Just as I was finishing up my workout, a friend I had never seen at the gym before came over to say hello.  His son was playing on a basketball team and they had a game today.  And so I went in to sit and talk with him when I was done.

He and his wife are attorneys and sitting there with them watching their son play ball, I was reminded that I was not part of that now, either.  Having spent the last five years doing this with my friend's son, I felt the growing gulf between this and this.  It is a fine thing all these basketball and soccer games and school dances and plays, as it keeps you from having to think about your own life and what you would like to do.  The satisfaction of watching happy children as deadly dull as all of it is comes to reassure you of something I am quickly forgetting just now.  I probably should join another gym, I was thinking as I sat in the family bleachers with my friends, someplace full of bouncers and 'roid boys who have too many troubles to count.  There I could consider myself lucky.

On the way home, I stopped at the local hardware store, a small, family owned business that has been in town since its inception, I think.  It is the sort of place that has everything--Red Ryder BB Guns, American Flyer Red Wagons, handmade knives, homemade candy, and kitchenware you can find nowhere else, old percolators and utensils you had forgotten about long ago.  On the way in, I ran into an old friend, another who I used to see much more when I was married.  But we are still friendly, though she has since married well and had two daughters and is part of that something that I used to know so well.

"Hey, you, Merry Christmas," she said smiling.

"Same to you," I said as we hugged.

We caught up through small talk.

"You still seeing the woman that has the son?"

"No," I said.

She gave a sympathetic frown and said oh.

"Of course not," I said, "It's Christmas."

"Yea, well. . . " she said uncomfortably, and then "I've got to pick up some things.  We have a big Christmas party to go to tonight.  I'm looking for a bird feeder that sticks onto the window for a present."

"If they don't have it here, you won't find it," I said.  And with that, we went our ways.

Home and showered, I wondered what to do.  The weather was still nasty.  I had gone to the grocery store, so there was no need to move now.  I putzed around with some photos I needed to process and made myself a not-so-perfect Americano.  And then too quickly the short day was done, the sun setting.  It was simply gone.  When it had been dark awhile, I decided to go out to get some dinner at a local fish place, some fish stew and a glass of wine.  Usually, I am greeted by name, but I had not been for awhile and all the counter help was new.  "Hello," a girl said brightly, "have you ever been here before?"  I gave her my order and chose to sit outside alone in the cool dampness, and when the stew came I seared my tongue with the first big bite.  Then again with the second.  I quickly drank the small chilled glass of white wine they had given me and watched the couples coming in from the parking lot smiling and holding hands, glad to be together and to have this to look forward to.  Everywhere tonight, there are parties, I thought, this last weekend before Christmas.  I had forgotten about them this year.  I hadn't received any invitations.  When I was married, we used to have a party on Christmas Eve every year.  It was always a glorious thing that began at a local wine bar where the requirement was that everyone bought a bottle of champagne.  The first year we had done this, we were not married.  We were making up for some reason and kissed in the parking lot before the big glass window before we had gone in.  When we looked inside, everyone was standing and applauding.  It was like that then.  And so we went into the warmth and bought champagne and the people we knew all did too, and the bar stayed open though they were closing because the owner could not turn down the money.  And each year more people joined us and the bar expected to stay open, and after we would all go back to my house and start the fire and eat and drink with our friends.  And when we were all good and drunk, we'd get into cars and drive with our headlights out through miles and miles of luminary-lined streets.  There were several neighborhood connected, each better than the other, and no house was left unlit.  And we were lit, too, on champagne and Xanax (there were always some people who were alone that year), and crowded into a few cars, we were all breathlessly floated past bright angels in the blue velvet dark.

I was remembering that as I rolled the tags of burned flesh on my tongue around the roof of my mouth.  The rain began to down harder.  I thought about the bottle of scotch I had waiting for me at home.

When I pulled into my driveway, I saw cars lining the street and crowded into the driveway of my neighbor.  He was having a Christmas party.  We have known each other for years, even before I moved into my house, and I used to get an invitation.  I wondered what had happened.  I had been invited to many parties and had to start at one and finish somewhere else.  I needn't worry about that tonight, I grinned.  

"How did I become this thing?" I asked myself knowing that I didn't have the energy to go to parties even if I were asked.  I tried to think of an answer.  "You must change."

It is easy to sit and stare with a glass of whiskey in your hand on nights like this, and to think of the past and of the future.  It is terrible, though, to sit and think of the present.  There it was, though, lying in rubble all about me.

I checked my email again.  I'd been waiting for something that never came.  Not that nor anything else.  "Don't dwell on it," I told myself practically.  "It won't change anything.  It won't help."

And the night wore on as nights will, and thinking made me sleepy.  I had been hoping for something all along, I knew.  We are helpless against it.  There is an awfulness in it that is inescapable.  Even a monk living in a solitary outpost must feel it, even after a lifetime of resistance.

But why resist, I finally concluded.  It is all there in books to read about.  You are trying the impossible.  You can be cynical, maybe, but you cannot avoid it.  There is Man's Fate.  But there is also Man's Hope.

The Hope That Is Not Hope

Does this non-story continue?  A hapless man, beginning to suspect a genetic connection to poor Estragon, waits without hope for a rapping at the door, for an envelope to drop through the mail slot, waiting, waiting for the thing that will not come.  But Estragon's heir is alone, unlike his distant uncle who had Vladimir to berate him.  I am luckier than that, he thinks, preferring for now the solitude.

Yes, it is true.  I come home and sneak around my house like a criminal about to be caught in the act looking for something that might be missed.  It used to happen.  It used to occur.  A note left on the seat of the open Jeep, something fragrant and thrilling.

But creep as I may, there is only the rubble of a once interesting life.  I look around me and notice the things left unnoticed for so long.  What hope is there, I think, of ever restoring things to their former glory.

But life goes on in its usual way.  Last night, I kept my appointment for a hair cut.  "Look at me," I exclaimed when I walked in, "am I not beautiful?  My hair is so rich and lovely, don't you agree."

"Yes, it is wonderful.  You are lucky," said the petite Russian Jew who has been cutting my hair for years.  She was working on another client, so I lay down on the awful bench that invites you to go elsewhere.

"So. . . what have you been up to," she said in that beeoootiful voice that I so love.

I find myself telling her the story I have been telling you, but with a storyteller's dramatic pauses and inflections and the innate ability to feel how well the story's going and to make the subtle changes needed to hold the listener's interest.  And with each woebegone turn of the tale, whenever I became my own luckless victim, there was appreciative laughter.  I felt good and warm there lying on the bench with two small pillows bunched up beneath my head.  And tale told, I was quiet and listened to the chatter that resumed about me.  It is as near heaven as I get, lying on that bench half-forgotten listening half consciously as I begin to relax until I truly fall asleep.

"Wake up, it's time to cut your hair."

I always worry that perhaps I have been snoring as I wipe my mouth to see if I have drooled.  Sleepily, I follow her to the back room to sit in the tilting chair before the sink.  I hear her testing the water temperature, then feel the warm wetness that is so chilling and erotic.  And now it is her turn to talk as she shampoos my hair like a mother washing the hair of a child.  She tells me about going to see a Chelsea Lately concert with her husband and being surprised that the tiny Asian girl sitting in the seat next to her laughed so hard during jokes about oral sex.

"I thought she was a child," she says.  "You know, you cannot tell the age of Asians."

I love ethnic talk with "others."

We talk about looking Jewish.  She is dark, but she thinks of Jews as having red hair.

"Really?" I say.  I have dated several Jewish girls.  With one from a very prominent family, I played "Jew or not a Jew" from the old Saturday Night Live skit.

"Oh, yes, I play that with my husband.  He does not believe that I can pick out who is Jewish or who is Russian."

"That's easy," I say.  "My old girlfriend upped the ante and would identify them by region.  'Boston Jew, Philadelphia Jew.'  Picking out the Russians is easy.  Can you tell other middle-eastern peoples from Israelis?"

"Oh, absolutely.  Palestinians I can tell right away.  My dentist is Palestinian.  I love her.  But when I asked her where she was from, she said, 'Jerusalem.'  A Jew would say Isreal.  Palestinians have a different nose."

"How so?"

"You know, they have the big hump in it."

"I thought that was Jewish?"

"When I was young, I used to tease my sister that she had a big nose.  She would always tell me my ears stuck out.  But as I got older, she began to tell me, 'Look, your nose is growing, your nose is growing!'"  She looked at me and laughed.  "It is difficult for me sometimes to tell an Italian from a Jew," she said.

Now I can pass for either most times being dark and having a prominent nose myself.  I am German and Dutch (what the hell's the difference), but you know those Moors made their way up and had their way for quite some time.

"Why don't you date Russian women," she asked me as if I had some rule against it.  So I played along.

"Too mean," I said.  She laughed because she knows the truth in that.  "Nordics are too cold," I continued.

"What do you want, some romantic woman?"

"Yes," I said as if I couldn't believe she needed to ask.

"What culture is that?"

"The ones that aren't so pretty," I said, and she squealed and gave me a high-five.  The gay fellow in the corner got up and began to do a little dance.

"I don't know what love is," he said to me.  "I only have self-love."  Since I am not aware of his situation, I didn't know if he was saying that because of a broken affair or if he didn't believe in love.

"You have to be practical," said the Russian Jew.  "Love always ends badly.  It is painful.  You have to think of other things, too."

"I'm going to see a Moslem women on Wednesday," I said.  "She's from Africa, but she is Indian."  For some reason this seemed to throw everyone for a loop.

"What does she look like?"

"Indian."

"What color is she?"

"You know."

"Is she dark?"

"Sort of."

"From Africa?"

"Yea, but she's Indian."

"Seems like she would be dark."

"She's not really Moslem," I said.  "Her family is."

"There," my hair dresser said, pulling my cape away.  I looked into the mirror.  I am always terrified of haircuts.  It seems I always get the odd ones when it is most important to look good.  I want to look good over the holidays as I hold out hope (oh. . . ) for some miracle.

The hope that is no hope.  I'll tell you about that sometime.  But now I must get ready.  It is the weekend.  Anything might happen.

To Dream No Dream

I'm tired tonight, perhaps the hangover from last night's wishing, perhaps the result of the constant beatings.  Of course, probably both.  I tried to write earlier, but I feel I lost the fire for it.  The tale not told is already stale, gangrenous. But a promise is. . . where was I.  

I was wearing a white shirt eating chocolate ice cream and scanning photos (today's image is one) when I heard the rat-a-tat-tat on my front door.  Expecting it to be someone I did not wish to see, perhaps somebody wanting to buy my Jeep or a neighbor handing out flyers for the holiday party, I trudged the distance noticing that I had spilled chocolate all over the front of my shirt.  Before I opened the door, I reached down to make certain the front button on my pajama bottoms was done.  And when I opened the door--did I already tell you this?  Yes, surely.  And so there stood some barely-known neighbor and one of the prettiest women with the greatest haircuts and best smiles I've seen in years.  What the hell was she doing with him? I kept wondering as she kept her eyes and smile on me.  I was thrown.  He talked, she didn't.  Come to the party, he said.  Yes, of course, I said, only because of the beautiful smiling woman.  I will come.  I will come.  

When they were gone, I went over and poured myself a drink and thought the unthinkable.  He did not care if I came to his party.  He would have sent me an invitation some time ago.  Still, maybe the party was under-attended, and he knew well enough to bring the young girl as a ploy.  If so, she was sure good.  Being a skeptic, I thought she was surely a shill.  But what was I doing?  The same thing I did every night, drinking and working and waiting for the clock to let me go to bed.  And so I put on my jeans and an old sweater and my beautiful wool jacket that gets too little use here in the south.  And a pair of flip-flops.  I just didn't have it in me to put on a pair of shoes.  No, no, that would be fine.  The big decision before I left was whether to pour my scotch into a paper cup or to take one of my own glasses.  Not wanting to drink good scotch from a paper cup. . . . 

I let myself into the big house.  Every inch of wall was covered with paintings.  There were easels set up in the middle of rooms and in odd corners holding this man's paintings.  They were painted in different mediums, none of them oils, and every one of them were of women, most of them nudes.  Of course, it was like being in some nightmare funhouse where all my own works were made ridiculous.  My head was pulsing.  It seemed to me the whole thing was a giant plot simply to make fun of me.  I could feel myself swaying.  

I walked carefully from painting to bad painting, for they were not very good, but there were lots of them, hundreds.  Volume.  I looked around for someone I knew, for I kept expecting everyone in the room to turn to me and laugh, faces plunging toward me, noses enlarging as in a fisheye lens, the echo and reverb set to maximum, the rpms set slow--haaaa-haaahaaa-haahaaaa.  But I didn't recognize anyone.  Wait, there was someone, the woman who owned the eyeglass store on the Avenue.  And there was another neighbor, a fellow who was a musician who owned a recording studio.  But that was it.  The rest were strangers.  And so I stood with my back close to one wall looking out at the crowd in a way that was inconspicuous as if I were still looking at the art.  

And then she was there.  Hello, she said with that incredibly wonderful smile, and my heart began to pound.  I smiled, my face crinkling like a mask.  Hello. . . oh, wait.  Oh, my.  I didn't recognize you at my house.  I'm sorry.  Geez.  How are you?  

It was a woman who had come to my house some eight or nine years earlier.  I have it all written down somewhere, in files of journals that I kept at the time.  It would take me hours to find them, to find this part, the part about her.  How did we meet?  She came by my house, I am sure.  She knew me already. . . but I am not ready to reveal all that yet.  I would have to tell too much and too much that is incriminating.  But we had a connection that was not quite personal and it turned out she lived a few blocks from me with her mother.  And she had come to my house one night. . . enamored.  And then. . . so was I.  

And now we stood there, two people with a strange history.  

"The last time I saw you, you said you were moving to New York. . . or L.A. . . which was it?"  

"Los Angeles."  

"Are you still there?' 

She was still there.  She had come home for the holiday to see her mother, but she was living just under the HOLLYWOOD sign, acting in independent films and doing odd things.  

"Have you been in anything I can see?" I asked her.  She named a film I can't quite remember now, something like "Beautiful Vampire Lady Killers."  I began to remember weird details about her.  She had been into video games and Kung Fu movies and strange Goth boys, I remembered, and I said, "You used to be into video games and Kung Fu movies and stra. . . karate or something."  

"Yes, yes, I still am.  Fighting and . . . " (and here I was prepared to hear "fucking" but that is not what she said) ". . . dancing."  Oh.

I had not thought about her for years, so it was a slow trickle of odd details that came back to me.  I still had a birthday card or a Valentines card or something that she had made for me sitting around in a drawer somewhere.  She used to come by my house when I was not there and leave things for me.  And sometimes at night when I was asleep.

"It has been a long time," I said to her as I remembered.  "How old are you now?"

"Twenty-eight," she said.  Jesus, she was beautiful.  And I tried not to think about what she was looking at, comparing it to what she remembered.  Eight years had been great for her.  For me. . . not so much.  I felt strange and embarrassed and awkward.  I remembered suddenly standing at the door in my pajama bottoms and white shirt with chocolate ice cream smeared all over the front.  I'd probably worn that shirt when she used to stop by eight years ago.  I felt like an idiot.  Some strange force had taken over my face.  I could not make it do anything natural.  We chatted a bit, the conversation, at least on my part, becoming more and more strained.  Her brother's girlfriend came over holding an unframed painting.  "Look," she said, "they just brought this down from upstairs."  It was a painting of her sitting naked in a chair.  I nodded my head up and down like one of those bobble heads people used to put in the back dash of the car.

Feeling weirder by the moment, I said, "I'm going to go.  If you would like to have a drink or go out for one, stop by."  She looked at me still smiling and said, "O.K."

And then I was gone.

At home, I was still amazed, first by the circumstance, and then by her utter beauty.  It had happened, I thought.  Someone was delivered to my door.

By morning, though, all that had changed.  Adrenaline gone, there was only the life I lead, the early rising and the feeding of the cat, the morning ablutions wondering how I felt, and the rigamarole of the complicated coffee maker.  Alone in the dark in front of the Xenon screen, I thought I needed to put blinds on the dining room windows.  There was no point in subjecting passersby to this vision any longer, this Hopper-gone-wrong image of solitude and. . . .  Perhaps she was out there now, or had seen me last night after I came home, sitting like a zombie typing on the little laptop.  I thought of photographs of the broken Kerouac sitting in his worn out chair living with his mother and his wife who looked like his mother's twin, of a wasted Neil Cassady after the ravages of a crazy life.  I began to think about my own awkwardness and ineptitude and about just me.

By morning, I knew there would be no stopping by, for a drink or otherwise.  Revisiting ghosts of Christmas past is a one-time thing.


I wish that I had taken a photograph of her last night, though, so you would believe me about her beauty.  It has been breaking my heart all day.  I have some photographs of her from long ago that I would have to look forever now to find.  I can see them in my head, though, that strange young girl with such wonderful half-Asian skin.  And now, where my heart had beaten so madly last night, there is a deadly thump that squishes rather than pounds.  I sit now in what passes for my pajamas, a scotch ready at my wrist.  It is late enough that I can go to bed now and dream no dream.  I'll wake plenty early in the morning.  

Reveal

I must write this all tonight while it is fresh and horrible and wonderful.  It is true, but is it real?

I am on the verge of revealing myself, of throwing away this mask of anonymity, for there is so much that I cannot tell this way.  I am handcuffed and chained.  What do I dare?

I am recently "divorced" without having been married.  The end of a seven year affair.  I don't wish to speak of that now, though.  It is merely ancillary to what I wish to tell.  There are other things, too, that should be said, but perhaps they will become apparent in the telling without the explicit confessions.  I don't know, for I have not written as myself for many years now.  That is what happens in a relationship.  You cut yourself off from others, and then yourself.  No, that is what happens to me.  But the tale.

I left work early today in spite of the fact that I have just been reprimanded for the hours I keep (or don't) by my new supervisor.  I am in trouble but do not wish to dwell on that just now.  I left because I was supposed to meet two women at my studio for "a shoot" (I must create a new vocabulary for I hate such sleazy phrases).  But at the eleventh hour, I got a text.  Cancelled.  It happens often, about fifty percent of the time.  C'est la vie.  I wanted to go to the gym anyway, so I was only mildly irritated.  After the gym, I went to Whole Foods and bought nothing but the best instant foods--natural, organic, steroid and antibiotic free.  It is an expensive joke, of course, but I play along and feel better about it.  And so the quick dinner and organic sorghum beer in front of the television watching that hideous Chris Matthews for a bit.  And then the inevitable whiskey.  Finished with dinner, I turned off the television, put on a jazz station, sat down with some Ben and Jerry's chocolate ice cream and a white shirt, and began to scan the millions and millions of Polaroids that I haven't gotten to yet.  Hundreds and hundreds anyway.  And after a while, there was a knock on the door.  Unusual, really, for I am living like a hermit right now and no one ever comes to see me.

Now I digress to tell you that I have given up hope of finding new love.  It is true.  I hope, like many others, but I know that hope is a folly, and I do not wish to court despair.  No Hope, No Fear.  A good motto I try to follow.  But even in the most ardent hearts, hope creeps in from time to time, and mine is that someone will show up at my door just for me.

Scoff if you will, but it has happened before.  Now I tell you this in full honesty and sincerity--I have never asked anyone on a date in my life.  You may think that is vain bragging, but I have had very few dates, so there is a correlation, I think.  Those I've had, though, were with girls who thought that they liked me enough to make the suggestion.  And I have liked them immediately for that.  I was once married (the mask begins to fall), and after my wife left, my life was a bit of a carnival.  It was only that I let it happen and nothing else.  Sometime I will tell you about it, if you are still coming around.  For now, however. . . we will skip ahead, skip ahead, skip ahead.

I had been in love after my marriage with a much younger woman, and, perhaps, she with me.  Maybe I should ask her now that she is older and very successful (she is an editor for a very major magazine that you probably have in your house from time to time).  Much older now.  She is thirty.  And when I tell you the circumstances surrounding all of that, you will shun me completely.  But not now.  Not yet.

After we parted company, I was the most blue I have ever been in my life.  Still, I do not know if it was her or the departure of my wife who was only twenty-nine at that time and much younger than I was, too (of course you are already psychoanalyzing me and everything is changing).  But I was blue and lonesome and sure that I would never have anyone pretty who I absolutely adored in my life again.

Skip ahead.

One night, I was lying on my couch on a Friday in what passes for my pajamas, watching something on television and drinking scotch, when there was a knock at my door.  Odd, as no one came around then. I opened the door and there was a young girl smiling at me.

"I work for your tenant," she said, "and she asked me to get something out of the apartment.  She said you would let me in."

Wry smile, me.  "Really?"  Some inanities that I thought were cute passed between us.  "O.K., here," I said and I gave her the key.  "I'll leave the door open. Just come in when you are finished."  And I went back to my scotch and whatever I was watching.

When she came back to give me the key, I asked her if she would like a something to drink.  To my very big surprise, she smiled and said yes.  I hadn't counted on this.

And so we talked and drank.  She was a student at the Country Club College and a violinist with the big symphony orchestra in town.  Talk talk talk, talk talk talk.  She stayed much longer than I would have guessed.  She had her violin in the car, and I asked her to get it so she might play something.  And she did.  Where there had been empty loneliness in my house, there was now classical music played on a very expensive violin that surely had to stir the heavens--as they say.   And when she left and I walked her to her car, I said, "Look, I won't ask for you number, but if you want to, you can call me."

And she did.  About ten minutes later.  She said she was busy the next night, but would like to go out after that.

We dated for three years.

All that by way of saying--it can happen.

Holy Jesus, I am far away from the story I intended to tell, and now it is late.  Perhaps I should quit and delete all this.  Or, perhaps, I should continue this later.  That, I think, would be the advisable thing to do.  But I will tell you about the knock at my door tonight, I think, eventually, and the hope it engendered here.  By then, though, it will already be false hope and this missive will fall to pieces.  No matter.  I will stop for now.  I've had too many whiskeys to continue with anything resembling coherency and sense.

Winning and Losing

Sometimes winning is losing and losing is winning.  You never can tell how things will turn out.  What we want most is probably not what we should want, and the things we fear can turn out to be much better.  But sometimes losing is just losing, and, it seems, more often than winning is winning.  I've asked hundreds of people if they think there is more good or evil in the universe, more happiness or unhappiness.  The sensible thing to say would be that they are even, and I give that as an option, too.  But overwhelmingly people choose the negatives.  That, evidently, is the human predicament, the human experience.  A hostile universe. 

I look at winners for whom winning is winning, and I feel many things.  In my experience, they are usually people who followed the rules, paid attention to the old saws, and stuck pretty closely to traditional values.  They were not the kind to fight against the hierarchies.  They accepted them and worked their ways up.  Are they free?  Are they happy?  Who the hell knows?  They look it.  Of course they have their sufferings, too, but they also have the old wisdom and beliefs that have evolved over generations.  I think there is something in that. 

I came from a generation who believed in The One Big Deal.  One deal, one score, and then we'd be set.  I've always liked the idea of John Huston.  He didn't seem to give a shit.  He went broke many times pissing away money like it was water.  And then, miraculously, he'd make it back.  He admired Hemingway and wanted to live like that, but there was a fundamental difference between them.  Hemingway was conservative, counting his pennies and the pennies of his wives, too.  He was more of a banker than a gambler.  Huston had none of that.  He was capable of putting it all on the next roll of the dice. 

If I've made mistakes ("if?!"), one is that I've tried to live by anomalies.  Many of us must.  I would point to the fellow who worked hard and saved his money and on the day of his retirement found he was dying or lost it all to a market crash or. . . or. . . or. . . .  And so I saved nothing, spending it all on "living."  And, of course, there was always the One Big Deal to believe in.  In truth, I lived more than most people are willing to accept.  I can see it in the eyes when I tell them things that have happened, things that I have done.  They don't believe it.  They think I exaggerate or make it up completely.  Fortunately, I have friends who know it is true, for they have lives such lives, too, but telling them is like telling a bus driver about an exciting drive.  When it all comes down to bad hips and knees and rotten livers and weekly trips to the doctor, what will I wish?  I think now that I must begin to save money for the future.  Funny, for I don't have time to save enough. 

I've been thinking about this for a while, but meeting the girl with the tattoos has me articulating it to myself (and inarticulately to you).  She wanted those tattoos.  They would make her happy.  Unafraid, she put them together piece by piece.  What now?  I could see something in her eyes. 

I've many new circumstances in my life that present me with challenges.  Perhaps we all do.  These are crazy times.  But many of mine are personal and individualized, so I am thinking without doing so, that constant churning of ideas just below the surface of the consciousness as the mind works out the pieces of the puzzle.  Often now, I am here and not here.  Many things need sorting out. 

But that is what makes a story, isn't it?  It is all the material of a life waiting to be sorted and ordered, just waiting to be worked out.  Or so it seems.